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Mona Lisa Betwining Chapter 2

 

  I dreamed of flying, of floating in the air above, and the sweet scent of dead flesh below me, and woke up gasping, alone in my bed. Amber had left before dawn, gone back to his men, his people, safe and unaware of where I would travel that day. To High Court, the ruling seat of our people on this continent, set high and remote in the northern reaches of Minnesota, bordering Canada. They'd summoned me for questioning on Mona Louisa's death, the former Queen who'd ruled my Louisiana territory. The bitch who'd ripped Gryphon's heart out, literally, from his chest, killing him and a part of me. I'd killed her in return, although it was not truly I who killed her finally, though I'd done my best to. It had been Blaec, the High Lord of Hell.

  The Council had waited for me. They'd had to, while I roamed the forest in my tiger form, in my separate tiger mind, until the day my human thoughts and feelings had finally filtered into my other self, and I could know and control that animal part of me, and realize that time had indeed eased my grief until it had become bearable.

  A Queen had been killed - so had a Warrior Lord, but that was of secondary concern, I learned to my fury - and questions needed to be answered. I was going now to answer them. Up to a point.

  The plane landed and we disembarked, Dontaine, Tomas, and I. I'd left all the others behind, those who needed protecting, the youngest among us - Jamie, Tersa, my brother, Thaddeus. . . him, especially, I did not want there - and the others to protect them. . . my ex-outlaw rogue, Aquila, and Chami, my deadly assassin. Left behind deliberately, also, was what remained of my heart - Amber, a powerful Warrior Lord, but even more vulnerable than the children. Queens feared him. Feared his bigness, his power, and the legacy his infamous father had left behind - Sandoor, who had raped his Queen and then faked both their deaths. San door, who had inconveniently returned to life and heaped even greater infamy upon himself when he had been discovered to have kept that Queen captive for over a decade, a Queen whom he'd had service his needs and that of his band of rogues. He was truly dead and gone now, killed by my hand. But his son was still paying for the father's sins. Amber would be looked upon with suspicion forever by other Queens, watched carefully by the High Court to see that he, too, did not turn rogue. Turn upon his Queen.

  "Two men are not adequate enough to protect you," Dontaine repeated now, as he had many times before during the flight.

  My answer remained unchanged as we disembarked and walked to a waiting gray van. "You and Tomas are enough. And I can protect myself. "

  "We should have brought Chami and Aquila, milady," Tomas said, speaking up for the first time. His southern twang softened his consonants, stretched out his vowels. Brown of hair, plain of face, as loyal and true as the sword he had sworn into my service, he was one of my trusted guards, an older warrior grown too powerful who had been cast out by his Queen and taken in by me. I smiled bittersweetly. Even plain and simple Tomas knew enough not to suggest Amber, the most powerful among us. And the most defenseless against the suspicions he would have faced at High Court.

  "I needed them to watch after the others, see them safe," I said to Tomas.

  "With all respect, milady," Tomas said in his soft drawl, "but your safety is the most crucial factor to ensure theirs. "

  "I will be fine, Tomas. I will be spending most of my time answering questions in the Council Hall. Having you two along is already luxury enough. "

  "A necessity, not a luxury, my Queen. And barely adequate," Dontaine muttered unhappily as we climbed into the van. "And my presence was only because they wished to question me as well. "

  True enough. He was one of the newest guards to my service, and the one I was least comfortable with. He'd challenged Amber for right to my bed, and I had agreed to take him into it when I saw that Amber was losing. Amber had ended up winning, unexpectedly. That knowledge and awareness of what might have been, that we could just as easily have been lovers by now, still sat heavily between us in all our dealings.

  We traveled the next several miles from the airfield to the compound proper in silence. Then the woods fell abruptly away and we entered High Court, a pocket of civilization carved out among the otherwise untouched, pristine forests that surrounded it. A scattering of small buildings flanked and circled out from a tall, stately, three-storied manor house. Across from it, matching it in height and grandeur, was a domed stone building, the Council Hall where our ruling heads of state, so to speak, the High Council members, gathered.

  An impeccably dressed little man, his black hair lined with silver, stood at the foot of the steps leading to the manor house, three footmen arrayed in attendance behind him. He opened the door of the van and assisted me out with a courtly bow.

  "Thank you, Mathias," I said, greeting the steward of the Great House, as his small army of footmen fanned out and gathered up our bags and trunks.

  "Welcome back, Queen Mona Lisa," Mathias said in formal greeting.

  "I'd rather not have returned so quickly," I muttered in reply, and caught the flicker of a smile on the proper steward's face before he smoothed it away.

  "It is always a pleasure to have you with us," he returned. Polite words, but he sounded as if he meant them. "The Council will see Warrior Dontaine first, as soon as you have settled into your quarters, and then you, milady, afterward. I've given you the south wing upstairs, the same as last time. "

  I nodded, grateful for his thoughtfulness, and followed our bags up the stairs and down the right hallway to a large, luxurious suite with two smaller bedrooms adjoining it. With murmured directions from Dontaine, our individual pieces of luggage were sorted out and set in the proper rooms, and the footmen discreetly filed out. With just the three of us, we each had a room to ourselves.

  "If you will stay here until I return, my Queen," Dontaine said, his face grim. And though politely couched as a request, it was a clear order. I lifted my brows but had no desire or plans to wander elsewhere, so I simply said, "Sure. "

  After he left, I showered and changed into a fresh black gown. I had brought all three - all that I owned - with me. No jeans and T-shirts here.

  I dried and brushed out my hair, leaving it loose in a dark spilling cloud down my back, and with Tomas glued to my side, ventured downstairs for something to eat, knowing they'd be awhile with Dontaine.

  He returned an hour later, as we were finishing our meal.

  "That wasn't long," I said, gesturing for him to sit down. Dontaine did so reluctantly.

  "There wasn't really much to tell. Nor was it the important part. " Meaning, he'd had no actual part in killing the Queen, what the Council was most interested in knowing about. "They will see you now. "

  I gestured a young footman over, although calling him young might have been inaccurate - all Monere under two hundred and fifty years of age looked young - and told him to bring out the plate of food I'd asked them to prepare for Dontaine. "They can wait five minutes. And" - I smiled - "you can talk fast while you eat. What did they ask you? And even more important, what did you tell them?"

  Between gulps of red meat - they liked their meat raw - Dontaine spilled out the details of his testimony. Even with the talking, it didn't even take five minutes to wolf down the entire bloody steak. Part of it was he didn't want to keep the Council waiting long; the other part was that his appetite was back now that his part of it was over, and relatively painlessly so, by his accounting.

  Downing the last gulp, he wiped his mouth with the napkin and stood. "If we may go now, milady. "

  I walked out into the night with my men flanking me, feeling like a prisoner heading for my execution, although that wasn't true. Or at least I hoped not. My greatest danger lay not with the Council, really, but with the secrets I held - and that I had to take great care not to reveal.

  A multitude of guards, dressed in various colors according to the Queens they served, crowded the wide corridors of the Council Hall, some sitting,
some standing, others milling around, chatting, all waiting. None of each court numbered less than six guards. The two sentries standing watch before the large double doors leading to the inner chamber dipped their head in greeting to me. "It is a private hearing, milady. Your guards must wait outside," one of the sentries said.

  I'd kind of gotten that idea already. "Of course. "

  I walked alone into the high-domed chamber, the heavy doors closing silently behind me. A dozen of the Council seats were occupied, all women but for one man, Warrior Lord Thorane, the Council speaker. Other Queens were there - I felt their distinct irritating buzz against my skin - and over them, I felt the weightier presence of the Queen Mother. But it was a new odd sensation, the awareness of a presence that I should not have been aware of, that caused me to stumble, almost fall. Before I even saw the darker skin, I knew the demon was there. Because I felt him. And I should not have.

  Demon dead are children of the moon who have died, but had enough psychic power to make the transition to that other realm. Their hearts did not beat, they did not breathe. Perfect predators, making no noise. Nothing to betray their presence. We barely felt them or sensed them, their presence no longer that sharp rush of attraction as with a Monere male or the comforting recognition with a Full Blood female or the buzzing abrasion with another Queen. We had only a muted awareness of their presence, so that we sensed them only when it was too late, when they were too close to us. Almost upon us.

  When I lifted my eyes to the chair on the raised platform to my far right, I knew that the person sitting mere would be a flash of warm golden color among the sea of white Monere skin and have nails that were long, sharp, and pointed. All that was true, I found, as my eyes settled upon that suddenly vibrant presence. Not a pull, not a repulsion, but an almost thrilling awareness; like a burn that did not hurt, just tingle a bit. But with this demon, not only its skin was golden. And it was not a he. It was a she. Her hair waved long and thick about the delicate heart of her face, a striking metallic gold color against the duskier hue of her skin. She was incredibly beautiful and incredibly tiny. Not little, per se. Oh no, not that, with her voluptuous bosom straining the burgundy silk of her shirt, and the generous swell of her hips stretching the tight leather of her black pants. The only thing little about her was her height and her wasp-thin waist.

  Lucinda, Prince Halcyon's sister. And her presence was a shock to me because I had been expecting to see her brother, my lover, Halcyon. Or his father, the High Lord of Hell.

  "Lucinda," I whispered, and fell weakly to my knees, swaying suddenly not only with awareness but with another growing discomfort within me - something sharp, something painful, something like sharp talons ripping me apart inside, trying to be born, trying to get out. I gasped, clutching my belly. With my next breath, I screamed.

  Raised voices sounded outside in the hall, and the double doors burst open, spilling in the sentries, and behind them, a sea of guards. Dontaine and Tomas were suddenly there, beside me.

  "What is it, milady? What's wrong?" Dontaine demanded, pulling my hands away so he could see if I was injured. With the first touch of him, the little shocking electric jolts that came from contact with him, the pain eased and I gasped, almost cried in relief, sagging against him.

  The room was a messy swell of noise and feeling, a collective sudden milling of presences that felt too powerful, too much to all be contained in the same room. Questions and demands were shouted. Then Warrior Lord Thorane was above me, looking down, his older face creased with worry. "Mona Lisa. What's wrong, milady?"

  "I don't know," I said, as bewildered as he. "Something inside me just suddenly started to hurt. "

  That awareness flared over me again, even surrounded as I was with the presence of powerful men and the electric sensation of Dontaine's touch. It pulled me, called to me. I turned my head and, in the sea of encircling faces standing about me, unerringly locked upon that one darker face. I found her not because of her distinguishing color, but because! knew exactly where she stood. And the scratching and clawing inside me, that horrible ripping pain, started again. Shit. I doubled over and another scream was torn from my throat.

  "What's wrong, what's wrong?" Tomas shouted, his strong hands trying to pull my hands away as Dontaine held me, huddled upon myself, writhing in his lap.

  "Get me away," I whispered, so softly, almost no sound because I had no breath. If I had enough breath, I would have screamed again. But he heard me. They both did. Dontaine lifted me up in his arms and with Tomas's help pushed through the gathered crowd and made his way outside.

  "Where?" Dontaine asked, his voice and body hard, while I was soft. Soft with relief against him as the pain lessened with each step he took away.

  "The forest," I whispered, my voice hoarse from my screams or from my breathlessness. I wasn't sure.

  He plunged into the thick woods. Wrapped in his electric touch, the night cool upon my skin and the soft rays of moonshine falling gently upon me, I felt immediately calmer, the restlessness within me stilling. Dontaine walked in silence, in quiet, and I lay in his arms in blessed painlessness as he took me deeper into the woods until we no longer sensed anything, heard anything, and the chaos of High Court was far away.

  "Is this far enough?" Tomas asked.

  At my nod, they stopped. "Can you stand?" Dontaine asked.

  "Yes," I said, even though I wasn't entirely sure if I could. But my legs held me as Dontaine gently stood me on my feet.

  "I never knew how wonderful it was simply not to hurt," I murmured in the quiet of night. The wind blew, rustling leaves in a gentle shuffle, an airy shimmer of sound, moonlight dappling our skin as it shone down through the thick forest of trees.

  "What happened back there, milady?" Tomas demanded, his voice clipped and harder sounding, his usual soft drawl absent.

  "I don't know. "

  "Do you not?" came a voice, soft and sultry. I felt her first before I saw her. Felt that tingling vibrant awareness, that sensing of demon dead.

  She stepped out as if from the very shadows, a part of it, startling my men because they hadn't sensed her, spinning them around.

  She stood far enough away so that I felt her but was not writhing yet in pain. Because I understood now that it was her presence that had caused it, triggering something to life within me, something that wanted to come out, even if it had to claw its way out of me.

  "Do you sense me, young Mixed Blood Queen?" she asked, her beautiful face still and unsmiling, looking unreal, like a golden statue come to life.

  "Yes," I answered in a quiet voice. "I sense you. How can that be? What have you done to me?"

  She smiled then, a human expression that warmed her still perfection, brought it to life. Then she laughed, that touchable laugh, the one that stroked you like a living, tactile thing. We all shivered, my men and I.

  "I? I have done nothing," Lucinda said. And though her voice was slow and languid like honeyed syrup, her eyes were hard and observant. "It is from what you have done to yourself. "

  I frowned. "Because I have been with Halcyon?"

  She shook her head, causing her long metallic tresses to dance and shimmer about her face like a flow of hammered gold come suddenly to life.

  "No. You could have taken him into your body a thousand times and it would never have caused you to sense him a fraction more. It is that other thing you have taken into your body - Mona Louisa. "

  My body chilled as her meaning became clear to me. And her words had been deliberate. She had called Mona Louisa a thing. And she had been. A Monere who had drank demon blood and become a little of both, breaking the demon dead's greatest taboo. . . the tasting of their blood. And for good reason. Because drinking that blood had made Mona Louisa strong, demon dead strong. Blaec, the High Lord of Hell, had killed her and slaughtered her entire retinue of guards to keep that demon secret. He'd let me live because he knew I would keep his secret in retu
rn for his keeping mine.

  What was my secret? Mona Louisa had been strong enough to kill Gryphon, my first love, by literally ripping the heart out from his chest. She'd killed him, and I'd wanted to kill her in turn, but I had not been strong enough to do so. She'd fought me and was beating me. And in my anger, my despair, my desperation, I'd turned to the source of us all, our Mother Moon, and begged her vengeance, begged her for help.

  Then I had done something I hadn't known was possible to do. I'd pulled the moonlight out from within Mona Louisa. When we Queens Basked, we pulled down the moon's rays, and they entered us, resided within us. I'd turned that power that all Queens had and used it upon another Queen: pulled the light out of her and into me. Sucked her power, her essence, her energy into me, drained her dry until she had been nothing but a wrinkled bag of shriveled skin holding together dried bones. Weak, helpless, but still living. I'd beheaded her, but she hadn't died because she had become more than Monere; she'd become part demon, and demons did not die even when beheaded. I could have chopped her into little pieces and she still would have existed. It had taken Blaec's touch to kill her. Make her finally cease to be. Only she hadn't, it seemed. Ceased to entirely be.

  My mouth dried and my heart stuttered. And deep, deep within me, it was as if someone laughed. Screeched with glee. I fell to the ground, feeling weak, feeling horribly frightened. Feeling something move within me like the stretching of wings.

  "The High Lord should have killed you," Lucinda said in a voice gone quiet, causing a reaction quite opposite from that tranquil sound. Tomas grabbed my hand, staying beside me. But Dontaine moved forward, toward Lucinda. His sword sang free as he pulled it from its sheath. "Leave us, demon," he demanded.

  She smiled, standing there calm and serene, a head shorter than Dontaine but not at all frightened. "And if I don't, white knight, will you try and make me?" she purred.

  He didn't answer her, just came at her, sword drawn.

  "No," I said, but my voice came out weak and thready instead of the harsh command I had intended. Beside me, moonlight from Tomas' sword reflected into my eyes. He'd drawn his weapon too, quietly, less flashy. Just there suddenly in his hand.

  "You've drawn your blades. I shall have to draw mine," Lucinda said, the sultry flow of her voice flavored with two things you usually did not hear when a man advanced upon you with a naked sword shining sharp and bright in his hand. . . amusement and eagerness. And it was the latter that scared me most.

  A shimmer of power, a darker, more subtler force, and the sharp fingernails of her left hand extended, grew four inches long. Thick, wide, and curving. Became deadly claws like five sharp knives suddenly growing from her hand. "It's not always length that matters most," she said, luscious lips curving, eyes laughing, like a sex kitten about to seriously play.

  She sprang. Only you couldn't see her move. She was just suddenly no longer there but behind Dontaine, like a wind blown past him. Something he felt but could not see, she moved so fast. Beside me, Tomas sucked in a shocked breath. Nothing stirred for a moment, then a blonde lock of Dontaine's hair, sliced free, floated lightly down to the ground like a dying leaf parted from a tree.

  Lucinda laughed at what she saw on Dontaine's face as he swung about to face her. "Still want to play?" she asked, her dark brown eyes sparkling like hot chocolate, eager to melt, eager to burn.

  Dontaine growled. Literally growled, a deep warning animal rumble that sounded odd coining from a human throat. Then he moved, with Monere quickness, a fast blur. But still motion you see. He struck at her but she was no longer there, like a ghost suddenly vanishing to reappear yards away, closer to me, closer to Tomas.

  Tomas gave no warning, like the sword he had drawn. He simply rushed to attack her, to fend off the threat he perceived to me. Both my men rushed her from opposite sides, coming together in a blur of motion. And Lucinda stood there, a calm little demon, until they were almost upon her, a fierce light in her eyes, a little smile curling her lips. And then she moved. They all moved. With sound and motion and grunts and thuds as they fought fiercely. As Dontaine went tumbling head over heels, tossed away like a stick playfully thrown for a dog to fetch. As Tomas slammed hard to the ground, Lucinda kneeling on his chest, looking too tiny to have done what she had done - overpower two strong warriors.

  Looking like a kitten who had the claws of a monstrous tiger, the sharp points of her left hand were buried like nails through Tomas's wrist, pinning his hand and the sword he still held to the ground in a brutal, effective manner. But his other hand was free and had drawn a hidden dagger.

  "Not fair odds. " Lucinda tsk-tsked. "Too little men to challenge me. But then I never claimed to be fair. " She drew back to strike, to move.

  "Don't!" My voice rang out in a hoarse croak. And Tomas's dagger froze in its striking drive, not because of my command, but because Lucinda's tiny hand gripped his. "Don't. . . hurt," I gasped.

  "Don't hurt whom? Him or me?" Lucinda asked, both menace and amusement in her voice.

  "Both," I whispered. "Both. " I tried to stand, to move toward them, but that other thing within me fluttered, stirred in protest. No, it screamed. Not closer. Away. Away from the danger, not to it! I fought to stand and lost the battle, unable to. But you didn't need to stand to move. I started crawling toward them, on hands and knees, my whole body trembling, shaking, resisting, as I dragged myself closer.

  "Halcyon's sister. No, Dontaine," I rasped as I sensed movement behind her. I blinked the sheen of pain-driven tears from my eyes - odd that fear dried your mouth, but pain moistened your eyes - and as my vision cleared, I saw Dontaine frozen like a literal statue behind the dainty golden demon, his sword angled for a downward thrust into her back, held unnaturally poised on the brink of that violence. And I knew it was not from obedience to my command - I would have been too late - but from the invisible power of her will. Her psychic powers were what held him immobile, a frozen prisoner in the tendrils of her invisible force. She didn't need physical touch to stop him. It was not just their physical strength that made demons greatly feared.

  She stood, pulled her claws casually from the ground, from Tomas's pierced wrist as his face writhed with silent agony. With a thought, she held him immobile, too. A shimmer of that dark shadowy power, and that hideous claw shrank back down to just pointy nails. She licked each bloody tip, slowly sucking each digit clean, savoring it; her cheeks hollowed with each sucking pull, her lips pursing around her fingers like a puckered kiss, making the motions dangerously sensual. The flash of ivory fangs I glimpsed made her just plain dangerous. She swayed her way to me slowly, seductively, like death come to play.

  She crouched down before me, looked into my eyes, those sharp nails freshly cleaned of Tomas's blood inches from my face. Curiosity was in those dark, dangerous eyes. "Halcyon's sister," she said, repeating my words. "What an odd creature you are to wish me no harm just because I am your lover's sister. "

  The tremors shaking my body were becoming wilder, stronger, with her near presence. It was as if my very skin tried to crawl off me, away from her. The skin on my back, shoulders, and arms rippled, moved, as if it had a will of its own. As if something beneath it was moving, struggling to come out, like a vulture's wings - Mona Louisa's other form. My skin burned as it stretched and I gasped at the pain, at the fight I had within myself just to stay planted there, not scramble away from her as every instinct in me was screaming to do.

  "Me," I wheezed, fighting to take the breath back into my lungs that the pain had forced out of me. "Just me. Let my men go. " I deserved to die, for so many reasons, not just one. They didn't.

  "You would not still be living, breathing, had my brother not claimed you as his mate," Lucinda said, and her voice was no longer sensual. Just hard, as if all pretence had been stripped away. "My kind hunted and killed things like you long ago. " Her eyes, dark like bittersweet chocolate, the one feature so like her brother, looked down at me
with none of the affection, the warmth, usually in his. And I realized then how cold those eyes could be without emotion. "But he did, and my father spared you when he should have destroyed you after what you had done and become. I shall abide by his choice. For now. " She stood and smiled, and it was not a friendly gesture. "I can always kill you later," she said like a soft promise, and walked away.

  Like a breeze blowing cobwebs away, the invisible bonds holding my men vanished and they were free. They rushed to my side, crouched protectively in front of me. But she was truly gone, back into the night, a child of darkness. Demon dead. And suddenly all I could smell was blood. The rich heady scent of it, its pounding, throbbing call. I could almost taste it like sweet wine rolling down my tongue. My eyes, my body, my entire being was drawn to the man who stood to my left, slightly before me, the flexing of his hand gripping the sword, pushing the blood out of his wounded wrist, two gaping holes where Lucinda's claws had pierced through like Crucifixion nails. Fat drops of red blood fell to the ground like precious wine spilt wastefully, and an ache started in my body, in my soul, for that dripping blood. An ache that throbbed and grew with each spilling, hypnotic drop. . . plunck. . . plunck. . . plunck. . . A thirst that seemed enormous, unquenchable. I wanted to lap that blood up, take it into me like air, as if I would perish and die if I didn't have it. And it was not the hunger of my tiger beast for raw meat. I just wanted to drink down his blood, a horrified part of me realized.

  A burning sensation filled my mouth, my gums, my teeth, as if that part of me wished to morph, to change, also. Into what? Dear God, into what? What was I becoming?

  Tomas. I forced his name into my mind, tried to see him as a person, and not something I could drink to quench that burning, aching thirst. Wounded, bleeding Tomas. He protected me from a threat in front, already gone, when the real threat now lay behind him, so close, a hand grasp away. My fingers spasmed where they lay planted on the ground as I desperately fought the need to reach out and grab that bleeding wrist, touch my fingers to that blood, squeeze it tighter to wring out even more of that redness. The need punched me hard in the gut, drew a small sound of distress from my throat.

  At the sound, my men turned back to look at me, saw me doubled over. "Mona Lisa," Tomas cried, reaching for me. "What's wrong?"

  "No. Don't touch me!" I choked, throwing myself back away from him, my eyes fixed on the jagged holes of his pierced wrist, on the torn flesh that cried red tears of sorrow at being wasted so, untasted, unsavored. It drew me, beckoned me like a siren's call. Taste me. Taste life.

  I shook my head violently, dragging myself farther away from his dripping temptation, frightened that if I tasted his blood, I would have fangs in truth; it was a burning promise a thin skin away from a violent, erupting birth. I pulled myself back until I came up against something solid, something warm, something electric as my skin met it. I tamed my head to see Dontaine crouched down behind me, hands set carefully on his spread knees. "Tell me what's wrong," he said in a gentle soothing voice, the kind of voice that one used to talk a jumper down from the roof.

  I looked at him with wide wild eyes. "His blood. " My voice cracked on the words, on the intensity of my hunger.

  "Tomas, leave," Dontaine commanded.

  Tomas's honey brown eyes flashed with ire, with rebellion. "I will not leave her like this," he said with a fire I had not seen in him before.

  I whimpered as he took a step closer, my eyes fixed on that dripping, red blood.

  "Look to where her eyes gaze, Tomas. Your blood is calling her beast's hunger up, and she is trying to fight it. The only way you can help her is to leave. "

  It was a hunger, all right, but not that of my beast's. That animal hunger was at least something I could understand, relate to. This. . . this was an undead hunger, thirsting for life itself. Heavenly Father, how had Lucinda been able to walk away so calmly from him after she had pierced his skin? How had she not slaughtered us all? Drank us all down?

  "Is he right? Do you wish me to leave?" Tomas asked, and I had to force myself to concentrate on his words, to understand them.

  "Yes. Please go," I said in a careful trembling voice, forcing the words out when a larger part of me wanted to scream for him to stay. Stay and feed me!

  Head bowed, he turned and left us, and that hungry, thirsty part of me howled inside as I saw my food walking away, punished me by driving that sharp longing deeply and fiercely into my body like a dagger thrust. I put my face into the ground and screamed, my fingers digging into the cool damp earth, anchoring me there so I did not ran after him, chase him down, and sink my teeth into him.

  Little electric jolts ran through me as Dontaine touched my shoulder, trying to distract me, I think, bring me back to myself. But it only served to draw my attention to another food source. Here, too, was blood.

  Slowly I turned and looked at him, at his hand, smooth and white, skin so soft-looking, so easy to pierce, to tear open to get to that rich flowing blood beneath. That call of life.

  "Your eyes," he whispered. "Dear Goddess, they're blue like Mona Louisa's. " And I felt his fear jolt through me with thrilling pleasure, almost as sweet a sensation as blood smeared upon my lips would have been. Crap.

  "Don't. . . don't be afraid," I said, my voice strained as my own fear - fear of myself - flooded over me.

  "Mona Lisa, what's happening?" he asked like a child begging a grown-up to tell him there was no bogeyman in the closet. That he was only imagining it. But he wasn't. And the bogeyman wasn't something hiding in the closet. It was me.

  "Touch me, Dontaine," I whispered. "Hold me. Make it go away. "

  Carefully, he sat me up and held me from behind, so he would not see my disquieting eyes. And perhaps, so my teeth would not be near his throat, a wise move. But though he pressed his chest again my back, wrapped his arms around me, encircling me with his electric presence, it did not chase that terrible blood thirst from me. I was aware, so aware of that slow, beating heart that pounded against me like an ancient primitive dramming. Calling: Here. Here I am. Come get me.

  And how I yearned to do so. So much that I shuddered.

  "It's not working, Dontaine," I said, trembling against him, my voice tight. God, how it was not working. I pushed to free myself from his hold, from that terrible dramming heartbeat pressed against me, but he would not let me go. His arms tightened and that strength inherent in a Full Blood warrior kept me chained, kept me captive for a moment, as long as I did not fight him.

  "What are you doing?" I demanded.

  "Please, my Queen, I feel your panic. . . Don't run. " I felt him tremble against me. Felt his heart quicken under the flooding surge of adrenaline. "My fear. Your fear. It triggers my beast. If you ran. . . "

  His words gave me an idea. Made me think of that other thing that dwelled within me - so many things inside me now.

  My own beast.

  I tried to call it forth, tried to unleash my tiger self to drive out that other thing - and it was a thing, not truly a person - possessing me with its hungers and desires. Come out, kitty cat. Come out and play.

  Always before it roared out of me. Rushed out the moment I unleashed it. But not this time. There was the faintest stirring, the brush of fur inside me. Then it subsided, once more quiescent within me, unable to come out and save me.

  "Dontaine. " My hands squeezed the arms holding me, kept them pressed down against me. "Call out my beast. "

  His arms spasmed around me for a second. "You're asking me to change into my Half Form, and I cannot do that. I will have to leave you then. I will not be able to change back until I have hunted. You will be unprotected. "

  "Dontaine. . . " Against my volition, my head lowered. My hands wrapped like shackles around his strong, pulsing forearms. And with but a thought, gently, easily, I broke his hold on me and lifted his pulsing wrists up to my mouth. I kept my lips closed, fighting myself, but could not stop myself from whi
spering those closed lips over that white fragile skin, so thin, where just beneath the surface pounded sweet flowing blood. I smelled it. Literally smelled it like the most alluring perfume. And my mouth, my gums, burned again like something set aflame, and my teeth ached to change, lengthen, become dagger-sharp fangs.

  With an effort that made tears spring to my eyes, I lifted my head back up, out of immediate biting reach. But only that one thing I could do. His wrists were still held like willing sacrifices before me.

  "Please," I whispered. "Call my beast, I cannot do it, or I fear. . . " My voice dropped to a mere breath of sound. ". . . I fear I may drink you dry. "

  He heard me, and his body stiffened. First with puzzlement, then with fear. "I thought this was your beast's hunger. "

  "No. " And my voice was careful, so careful. As if one loud sound would be enough to break my restraint. For fangs to break through my gums. For me to sink them into that beating pulse there before me like a waiting present. "Not my beast. Something else. "

  And there was not much for it to be, that something else. Only two things liked blood. Our animal beast. And demon dead. I could almost feel him reaching this new conclusion. And realize that he wasn't holding me, so much as I was holding him now. Realize that it was not my animal self coming to the fore, giving me that greater strength. Nope, something else already there.

  "Please, Dontaine. Call my beast. " I said it so calmly when I wanted to scream it, especially when his heart started pounding in fright, in terrifying realization that something worse, much worse, was going on.

  "Blessed Night," he whispered. Then he gave me what I asked for. The energy in his arms, only his arms, changed, like a distinct line drawn up to his elbows and stopping there. A hot wash of energy poured out from him, powerful waves coming out as if pushed by a tide from the arms that I held. Beneath my touch I felt his skin shimmer and change under the cloth covering it. Felt his bones shift, elongate, tendons and muscles popping into new positions. His hands, the only things visible, stretched, became wider, the fingers rougher, coarser, the skin thicker, less human and more Other. A sheen of fur flowed over the skin as power spilled down his hands. They spasmed once, then huge hooking claws popped from his fingertips like energy let loose to take form and substance and shape. That hot wash of energy flowed up my hands where I touched him, and into me, tingling and heating my palms, then spilling it up through the rest of my body until I was pulsing, vibrating from head to toe.

  That Other in me could not stand beneath that warm flooding power. It was pushed aside, and my animal self rose. My tiger stretched and roared, then snarled, caught, unable to come out, unable to fully rise to the surface. That small lingering presence of that demon-tinged Other interfered with it, so that while my beast presence dominated, it could not totally push out the other entity. Both were caught in incompleteness, one coming, the other going, neither able to reach their destination.

  His hands - his claws - pulled from me and I let them go, and turned to look up at Dontaine. He was still in human form, his face still etched with that strong masculine beauty. Only his forearms, his hands, had changed, looking unreal against the normal rest of him. "You didn't change completely. "

  "Neither did you. Your eyes, though, they are that of your beast's. . . and not of her. Are you better?"

  Better? I laughed, and it was a harsh, crying sound. A sound that made Dontaine flinch. "Yes, I'm better. Anything was better than that. . . but I can't completely change. She won't let my beast come completely out, Dontaine. " The urges and needs of my beast, however, were there, though the form was not. The animal hunger, the need to hunt, to bring down prey, to feel the hot spill of blood and quivering meat sliding down my throat. . . it beat within me. Only I was still in human form, like Dontaine, but not because I willed it. Oh, no. My will was being roadblocked by that she-bitch I had sucked into me.

  I was caught in a limbo of in between, feeling the needs of my animal self, unable to fulfill it in my human form. And before me stood something that could sate my hunger, something that still looked like prey. I pushed away from him, gasping, falling onto my back, crawling away from him, hysterical giggles choking my throat. I didn't want to drink him anymore. Now I wanted to eat him.

  "Don't. . . don't. . . " he warned, and as I watched, his eyes turned from emerald green to autumn-leaf brown. The eyes of his beast, his wolf.

  "I'm sorry," I said, knowing I was triggering his own hunting instincts, "but I. . . I can't stay here. " I turned, scrambled to my feet, and ran. Fleeing from my fear, my hunger. But, unfortunately, I couldn't flee from myself.

  I ran blindly, desperately. Without that natural liquid grace that had always been a part of me, that came from my Monere blood. Now, for the first time in my life, I stumbled, tripped, almost fell. I ran with human clumsiness, as if that limbo I was caught in shut down other parts of myself, my gifts of strength and grace that I had taken for granted, always there like the air I breathed. Only it wasn't there now. I ran and knew even in my panicked confusion that I could not hunt like this. I could not capture, much less bring down even a rabbit in this condition, and without sating that bloodlust, I could not free myself of this state. I lurched up against a tree, felt the hard uneven bark dig into my palms. I pressed into it with my gripping fingertips, and rested my cheek against its cool rough surface, breathing hard.

  A sound, an instinct, brought my head up and I found myself looking into the eyes of a gray timber wolf less than three meters away. Its eyes were feral, wild, hungry. Seeing me as food. For one wild moment I thought it was Dontaine, changed fully into his wolf self. But another sound, a low threatening rumble, swung my gaze to my right. Dontaine stood a stone's throw away, still in his human form - mostly, at least. Only his arms and hands were that of his animal self.

  He stood tall, beautiful, and silent, and was somehow frighteningly wild and feral. Even more dangerous than the natural wolf that hunted me. His eyes locked with that of his wolf brother, and a shuddering roll of electric energy rolled off him like silent echoing thunder. He growled, a deep, vicious warning. A totally animal sound coming from a human throat, and the pure menace it contained alarmed something primal in me. Was even scarier than looking up and finding myself face-to-face with a hungry timber wolf.

  The wolf turned and slipped away, ceding his prey to a more powerful predator. I turned back to look once more at Dontaine, at those reflective autumn-brown eyes, not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid not to. He came slowly forward, toward me, his body strong, fluid, deadly, a graceful killer with monstrous claws that could rip you apart with the added power of his beast upon him. I tensed to leap away, to flee, even though I knew I could not hope to outrun him.

  "Don't, please," he said, voice raw and deep, as if growling like that had hurt his vocal cords. "Don't run. . . If you do. . . " He took a harsh, deep breath. "I cannot leave you unprotected, and you cannot hunt. Please, my Queen. " He stopped several yards away and dropped to his knees, begging me with those animal-brown eyes. "Please. "

  And I knew suddenly what he asked of me. What he would not put words to. There was only one other way to rid us both of our bloodlust: To channel it into sex. There was no other choice, really. Had Dontaine not followed me, in my almost human state, stripped of my Monere strength and quickness, the timber wolf would have killed me. Only now did I shudder at coming so close to death.

  Adrenaline surged like a flooding tide of life within me, and my eyes fixed upon the man kneeling blonde and beautiful before me, asking me to save him, save us both. If I ran from Dontaine now and triggered his beast's hunting instincts fully, instincts that he was vulnerable to only because I had asked it of him, he might end up killing me himself. I'd left him in a terrible dilemma. It was up to me now to get us out of the mess I had gotten us into.

  With trembling hands, I reached back, unzipped my gown, and let it fall from me onto the ground. My underwear followed and w
hen I stepped free and naked toward him, I saw his eyes fill with almost overwhelming relief. No heat yet, just plain and painful relief. I came to him, trusting him not to rip my throat out while I still must look like prey to him. Trusting that though I felt not one iota of sexual attraction for him at the moment, not when a part of me was still screaming for me to run away. . . I knew, knew, that the innate chemistry between Monere male and Queen would flare to life with close enough proximity. And it did when I was a hand's reach away from him. My aphidy - that innate chemistry, that power that all Queens possessed - sprang out with a force that made me gasp and sway toward him, almost fall upon him. I didn't. Fall upon him, that is. Not physically, at least. But that part of me invisible, not seen but felt. . . oh yes, felt. . . that hit him with the force of a flying arrow aimed true, burying itself deep in its target, in a perfect bull's-eye.

  Dontaine quivered, his body tensing with a different kind of tension now, his eyes brilliant, almost glowing. I inhaled the musky fragrance of his arousal, and of mine. And welcomed the forceful attraction that sprang up between us, embraced its overwhelming intensity willingly, gave myself over to it fully.

  "You're wearing too many clothes," I said, surprised at the seductive huskiness thickening my voice.

  "My hands," he said and my eyes fell to his hands - his claws, actually - which he kept lowered at his sides. Monstrous, deadly, and supremely ugly, especially in comparison to the rest of his perfect masculine self. Hands that bothered me hugely. I had no choice but to put aside that discomfort. It could be worse. Oh yes, it could have been much worse.

  "Let me," I said, and knelt before him.

  My hands whispered down his shirt, freeing the buttons, pulling first one sleeve off, then the other, unable to hide a tremor when my hands brushed over fur. Unable to appreciate the loveliness of his naked chest because of what also had been revealed. Fur covered him up to his elbows. Great hooking claws, looking like curved black exclamation marks, the ends sharp and pointy. It broke the mood of my lustful, blissful state, and I forced my appalled gaze away from it. Don't look at them, I told myself, closing my eyes, inhaling the musky scent of his arousal, concentrating on that lovely pull between us instead, a pull that seemed to originate deep within me, from my very womb. A womb that felt empty, aching. Clenching in its need to be filled.

  I felt him pull back from me. Felt a shimmer of electric power dance in the air between us, and my eyes flew open. The furry forearms and those monstrous claws shimmered, faded slowly, then were gone. And the beautiful perfection of ivory-white skin, unblemished, and long, sensitive, strong fingers - the hands of a pianist, of an artist - were in their place. I'd never noticed before how beautiful, how well made his hands were. He leaned back, eyes closed, clearly exhausted from the effort of changing back, perspiration dewing his chest, dampening his face.

  "You didn't need to do that," I murmured.

  His eyes opened, and that reflective animal-brown color gleamed back at me once more. But the expression in those eyes was pure male. "I didn't know if I could change back so soon. But I wanted to touch you," he said, and tired or not, he reached for me, and I fell into his arms, into his saving embrace, and lost myself to the bliss of his touch.

  The smooth muscles of his chest flattened my breasts, tingled and sharpened my nipples at the brash of skin with skin. The feel of his lips was soft as he brushed them against mine, like a painter making his first delicate stroke on clean canvas.

  "Mona Lisa," he murmured, and his lips touched mine again, harder, firmer, more possessive. The tip of his tongue touched my lips, lapped wetly over my seam asking for entrance, and I granted it to him and tasted him as he tasted me, anchoring my spinning world with my hands grasping his broad shoulders. He tasted warm, sweet, and nutty. Like mead. Like ambrosia. Flavored like the sun, tasting of the earth. He explored my mouth, tangled his tongue with mine, and I sucked upon him, lapped him up. I felt him twist and move against me as he freed himself of his clothing, and then his hands were finally upon me and I cried out at the joy, at the relief of feeling mem. Of feeling him, naked and hard and ready against me. Touch me, yes. Touch me. And he did.

  My world spun, tilted, and I was on the ground, my back crunching fallen leaves beneath as Dontaine covered me from above. His weight upon me was deliriously hard, deliriously dominating, as he parted my legs, and I felt him hard, thick, and poised at my body's entrance. I looked into his face above me, his nostrils flared wide as he breathed in my scent, my body's wet readiness, his eyes hard, intent, a glittering shining brown, almost blind in his driving urge to possess me, the slash of his cheekbones taut and flushed, reddened in rising desire like his lips, drawing my eyes to the chiseled perfection of his mouth, his strong chin, his every feature. Like a Greek god come to passionate life. I wondered how I could have turned from him before. And I stiffened as I remembered what he had offered me then. A child.

  Desperately I straggled to push aside the lust-crazed need to mate. Tried to concentrate, focus, think on that very important fact. "Wait," I said urgently, and felt him hold himself coiled and still above me. And realized how terribly vulnerable I was to him in this position. One move and he would be in me and I would be unable to stop him. And I would no longer want to.

  My eyes locked with his, and we held ourselves poised there for one terrible long moment, on the threshold of something wonderful. On the brink of something disastrous.

  "I can't. . . No children, Dontaine. I can't get pregnant. " Could not risk what I would pass on to a child in my possessed state. No other word for it. Possessed and driven by instincts not just Monere but demon dead.

  I felt his entire body clench. Felt every powerful, strong muscle lock in silent protest as he fought himself. Fought against every screaming male and animal instinct he had to plunge himself into me and mate. His brown eyes glittered so sharply down at me that I was surprised they did not cut me. His face was tight, almost brutal, above me, and he growled. Actually growled. One poised terrible moment. . . then he rolled abruptly off me and lay on his side, breathing harshly.

  I went limp with relief. With knowing how closely we had come to disaster. "Thank you. Thank you, Dontaine," I said, touching his shoulder. He flinched as if I had whipped him, his entire body coiled tight.

  "We can have sex," I whispered tentatively, my hand frozen still on his shoulder. "Just. . . I can't risk getting pregnant. Not now. Not while I'm like this. "

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. "All right," he said, managing to sound oddly calm and reasonable, while every muscle in his body screamed with tension.

  Hesitantly, I smoothed my hand down his shoulder, ran it lightly down his arm. And that stroking caress flared anew that drowning sensuality, that powerful draw of male to Queen. He shuddered as I drew myself against him, rubbed myself against his back. Stroked my hand against his chest, pausing to circle once each tight flat nipple. I lifted myself over him and rolled him onto his back, and he moved unresistingly where I wanted him to go.

  I almost purred at the pleasure of seeing him spread out like a beautiful offering before me, and didn't even try to resist the bounty of his lovely body. I kissed his other shoulder, trailed my lips down a sinewy forearm. Whispered them over his puckered nipples, lapping my tongue roughly over the little soldiers that had come so attentively to attention, while my left hand roamed lower, following the lightly furred trail that arrowed down his middle, leading me to where he pointed straight up like a giant tree towering over thick brush. I touched him, ran my hand up and then down, measuring his length, grasping his generous width. Velvet hardness, pulsing life.

  He made a deep rumbling sound, pushed himself against me, and his hands buried themselves in my hair as I suckled and laved his little nipples, then moved my lips lower, following the path my hand had blazed. A light kiss over a ridged abdomen, a gentle lick low over the belly that made him quiver, a nuzzle over where his musky scent lay most thi
ckly, causing his thick shaft to brush against my cheek, allowing me to appreciate how butter-soft his outer skin really was - such softness to cover such hardness - and then my mouth was over him, on him, around him. He was of average length but so thick around that I had to open my mouth fully to take him in. I hummed with pleasure as he slid thick and smooth inside me. I ran my tongue around him, tasting him, more sharp, more bittersweet here.

  Then I lost the sweet pleasure of it as my mouth suddenly flared to burning life. As my teeth ached, my gums throbbed. As I realized that what filled that supple hardness in my mouth was not muscle but blood. Blood that called so strongly tome, so suddenly, that I ripped myself away from him, falling onto my back, my elbows. Because for one terrible moment I had almost plunged my teeth into him. Had almost felt his blood running hot and pulsing down my throat.

  I cried out and my hand covered my mouth as if by that action I could stop the fangs from coming out. Dontaine knelt beside me, the powerful jut of his arousal too close, too tempting to my burning teeth. I fell back from him, hands raised up to ward him off.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Your blood. Too much blood down there. Too close to the surface. "

  "What do we do?"

  "I don't know. " I shook my head, finding it hard to think when I was so suddenly filled once again with bloodlust. Demon bloodlust.

  "Let me. " He moved down to my feet, touched my thighs gently, asking permission. Opening my legs to him, closing my eyes, I granted it. Yes, yes. Please, anything. Anything to take away that terrible urge, that terrible thirst.

  It soothed, eased, with the first touch of his lips on my inner thigh. With the firm powerful grasp of his hands on my outer thighs, opening me up even more to him. To that questing, marauding, wicked, wicked mouth. A lick, a kiss, a gentle nip that stiffened me suddenly in fright, not lust.

  "No blood. You cannot take my blood," I said, my heart pounding with the new threat. It was a strong Monere instinct to mark your lover. To break their skin and taste their blood. If he did, I did not know if the demon hunger that possessed me would pass on to him. "You must swear not to take my blood. "

  "My oath on it. "

  I went limp at averting that other near disaster. "God, I'm sorry. So many things you can't do. . . I just - "

  "Hush. You are here before me, opened to my pleasure. All is well," he soothed, and played his lips upon my mound, nuzzling the curly hairs there, inhaling my scent, breathing upon me as the golden fall of his hair brushed the sensitive skin of my belly, my thighs, like a thousand whispering kisses. I was too grateful to him to be embarrassed at being exposed so blatantly like that. Too thankful at feeling the bloodlust ease and another lust rise and take its place as he lowered his mouth and licked me, a delicate teasing stroke.

  Oh!

  Nerves tingled to life within me. Pulsed deep in my core, wetting me, spreading my legs even wider for him. I whimpered, then jammed my hand to my mouth as if to stop the sound.

  "No, let me hear your pleasure also as I taste it. " And his words and the hot gust of his breath blowing over me there brought another low sound to my throat. Made me writhe, lift myself up to him. Begging, pleading without words to touch me again like that. With a low pleased rumble, he did. His head dipped down and his tongue lapped over me again with a surer, firmer stroke. Then another, and another. Driving me nuts. Giving me a taste of pleasure and making me want even more. "Tell me what you want. "

  "I don't know," I gasped. "Just more. Harder. . . Oh God," I breathed as he obeyed me, and sensation lashed me with sharp pleasure. He bent my knees, pushed them back so that I was completely opened to him. And I could only clutch his head, hold him to me as he spread me apart with gentle fingers and speared his tongue into me like a rapier thrusting sharp and deep. I cried out, arched up into him as he began a driving rhythm, pushing his tongue deep and repeatedly into me, his forefinger feathering lightly over my plump and swollen pearl that he had plucked free from the outer folds. And I didn't know which sensation was worse, or better, or more unbearable.

  I surged against him like helpless waves lapping against the shore, begging him wordlessly, Bring me home. Bring me home. And he did, with a gentle squeeze, a pinching pluck of my swollen nub. A deep plunge of his thick tongue spearing into me, as if he were driving a blade home. I burst apart as light burst from within me. And a trembling rolling climax took and shook me, but didn't free me. I lay there in quivering aftermath, still hungry. Shit. Not for blood, though, thank the Mother. But for something else. His pleasure. And it wasn't just a woman's desire, but that something else. That something dark and Other that lay within me and held me, still.

  I opened my eyes, saw those animal-brown eyes, the eyes of his beast, staring down at me. "You didn't come," I said.

  "If you are well now, I can see you safe. Then shift, go hunt. "

  It was an astounding offer, unexpected, especially for someone who had challenged Amber once and risked his life for the privilege of my bed. I looked up at that handsome, patrician face and this time saw past the surface beauty to the generous heart beneath it, and the unbelievable control he wielded. And my heart melted at what I found there, unexpectedly. It wasn't the sex that opened my heart to him; it was this kind and selfless act. The gift he offered so easily - taking care of my needs and submersing his own. My heart cracked open without my willing it, filling me with something more tender than I had ever expected to feel for him - the softness and sweetness of love.

  "No," I said softly, and drew him down to me, "I need you still. " And kissed him gently with the new emotion I found welling up within me. Tasted myself upon his lips, his tongue. Sucked him deep into my mouth, fed upon him for a moment, then released him when the blood that filled him there also became too tempting.

  "I need your pleasure, your release. I don't know why," I murmured, holding his head buried against my neck, safely away from my mouth. "But I need it. I'm sorry. "

  He laughed, his face pressed against me. Then lifting his head, he looked down on me. "I'm not. Tell me how. "

  "From behind. " The only safe entry left to us. "Take me from behind. " I ran my hands down the strong column of his back and over the tight swell of his bottom to feather over his anal pucker. "Here," I whispered. "I need more than just your tongue in me, sweet though it is. Take me here, please. "

  He looked at me for a heartbeat of time. Touched my face, as if what he saw there shining in my eyes was something he could not believe. Dared not believe. Looking at me as if I were truly seeing him for the very first time. And I was. I was. He trembled, and emotions too fast and fleeting for me to catch passed across his face.

  "Mona Lisa," he murmured with shaking breath. Then as if the emotions, the awareness between us was too much, he lifted me up and turned me around so that my hands and knees were braced upon the ground. He wrapped himself around me, his head buried in the small of my back, and I felt something hot and wet fall against my skin. His tears.

  "Dontaine - "

  "Shhh. It's okay. I'm all right. Just give me a moment. "

  I wanted to turn around and hold him, but he would not allow it. His arms tightened around me, holding on to me as if I anchored his world. As if he would be cast adrift and drown if he let me go.

  All I could say was his name, "Dontaine," softly and yearningly. He gave one big, almost convulsive shudder against my back then released me until only his hands were upon my hips. The softness of his lips pressed against me. Ran slowly, deliberately down my back, starting from my nape downward. The curtain of his hair fell like a silky halo lightly brushing over my skin. But the greatest sensation were those velvet-soft lips pressing feather-light against me. I couldn't believe how sensitive a back could be.

  When he reached down past my hips and continued still. . . When the silky firmness of those lips and the warmth of his breath fell unerringly on my tailbone and pressed a little bit harder, a lit
tle bit firmer, just there. . . A lightning bolt of sensation shot from my tailbone straight to my groin, washing me with heat so suddenly that I bucked and swayed and cried out beneath him. Had his hands not held me at the waist, I would have fallen onto the ground.

  "Oh God. Dontaine!" And his name was a demand, a plea.

  "Trust me," he said.

  "Yes. " How could I not?

  "I won't get you pregnant," he whispered. "Just let me play in your wetness for a moment. "

  I nodded but didn't really understand what he was saying until he lifted my upper torso up off the ground and eased me back against him to lie against his chest. "Just a little wider," he said huskily, and shifted my knees farther apart. My sensitive back was in bliss, cradled against the lean coiled muscles of his chest, my hips and bottom snuggled deep into his enveloping lap. He surrounded me from behind, bigger, harder. And the hardest part of him, that special wide thickness, slid between my legs in the space he had created for himself. He rubbed his shaft against my wet outer lips, so hard, so full, that I felt as if I rode atop a log. A hand, strong and sensitive, spread low over my belly in a stark claiming, holding me to him, holding me still, as his hips undulated gently against me. The softest of motion - a slow push forward, a slow wet slide back - to trigger such an avalanche of rich sensations.

  The lush eroticism of what I saw - that claiming, controlling hand, the brief tantalizing peek of the red-purple head of him pushing out between my legs, then pulling back, disappearing from sight for a pounding heartbeat of time as if into me. . . it made my eyes flutter close, made me clutch his cock-hard thighs. Made me squirm back against him, groan his name in pleasure and suffering. Because I wanted him in me. So badly that my stomach clenched. And deeper, beneath his splayed hand, my empty womb tightened.

  As if sensing my need, his hand pressed harder into me, assuaging my need for a moment, replacing it with an even greater need for his hardness to fill me. "How pretty you are," he murmured, his deep, husky voice a trilling vibration against my neck.

  He covered me completely from behind, leaving me feeling oddly vulnerable, oddly naked, in front. It took me a moment to realize that as I could see us, so could he see me, and that he was watching a part of me that under his stirring gaze suddenly ached to be touched. My breasts, small and high, grew even tighter, more swollen beneath the caress of his eyes - the part of my body I was most sensitive about because I was no more than a handful, and barely that. But stroked so intimately below by his thickness, aroused so much by his voice, his careful touches, I was too far gone to be embarrassed. My nipples pointed outward, hard, peaked tips pouting to be touched. And he answered their call. His hands slid upward to cup my breasts, just holding their slight fullness, as if offering my nipples out to the darkness. And the sight of those long, tapered, sensitive fingers holding me so was as arousing as his actual touch.

  "Please," I begged, trembled, arching against him, pushing my breasts outward and even more into those beautiful masculine hands.

  "Yes," he said, and brushed his thumbs over my nipples. The pleasure of it jerked me back. Pulled a gasp from me. And started the play of moonlight once more upon my skin. A white trembling glow that started there, from where he touched me, spreading outward to the rest of my body. For one moment, I was a brilliant white thing against his skin made darker in contrast, and then light spilled onto him, and he began to radiate with light, also, spilling it out into the black velvet darkness. I watched as the light took us both, filled us, two children of the night aglow.

  "Beautiful," Dontaine breathed, a whisper of sound in my ear. As the light played upon us, he played upon me, his artist hands molding my breasts, squeezing them, lifting them, plucking my berry-red tips, squeezing my nipples, pulling them, making me arch and cry out, writhe against him.

  "Please, Dontaine. Please. "

  Heeding my plea, a hand left its nipple play and sought darker, more sultry depths. Two ringers sank into me, came back coated with my fluid. Reluctantly, he released me, urged me forward once more onto my hands. That wet hand touched me where I had touched him, circling my anal pucker, coating it with my own wetness. Eased in a finger gently past the tightness.

  "So tight," he murmured, pushing in a second finger. I shuddered, groaned, as he stroked slowly in and out. Lovely, lovely, but I needed him. His pleasure, not mine, sweetly killing though it was. "I don't want to hurt you. "

  "You won't. God, you won't. Please, Dontaine, I need you in me. "

  "Then let me come into you. " His fingers left me and I felt the hard wet head of him probe me for entrance. He pushed forward, but I was so tight and he was so wide, he did not enter. "I don't want to hurt you," he muttered, voice tight, strained.

  "No, no. You won't. Please, please!"

  "Don't. . . " He pushed in hard and the head of him popped in past the tight sphincter. ". . . let. . . " Another push. ". . . me. . . " A gentle slide. ". . . hurt you. " More of him filling me, cramming me.

  "You won't. . . it doesn't!. . . Yes, yes, that feels so good. . . Oh, Dontaine," I cried when he was finally seated deep and full within me. And I both lied and told the truth. He was too big and I was too stretched for it not to hurt a little. But it hurt in a good way. Oh God, yes. So good, so good. I groaned as he shuddered against me, holding himself still, buried deep inside me.

  "Mona Lisa. . . " I felt him trembling with restraint But it wasn't restraint I needed. And pain did not matter. I needed his release.

  I pulled forward then slammed myself back against him, and he gave a guttural cry at the tightness of me running over his length so unexpectedly like that. His hands clamped down on my hips, holding me still. "Stop," he muttered harshly. "You'll hurt yourself. "

  "You're hurting me by not moving," I cried plaintively.

  "Behave," he said, his hands like iron manacles as I tried to rock against him. His tone became whiplash sharp. "If you don't, I'll pull out. "

  The threat stilled me as nothing else would have.

  "I'll give you what you want," he said, breathing heavily, "but we do it my way. You'll take what I give you, as slow or fast as I want to give it to you. Do you understand?"

  I nodded wildly.

  His hands left me, and I stayed obediently still and trembling beneath him. A harsh breath, two, then he leaned over me, covered me, like a stallion blanketing a mare. His lips brushed across my nape. "Trust me," came his warm breath, stirring the soft hairs there.

  "Yes," was my reply, and his teeth grazed lightly over my skin. So delicately, so dangerously. Setting off sunbursts of sensation where he touched.

  "Don't. . . move," he said huskily, a stark command. Trembling, I obeyed him as his hand slid across my belly and then lower until his fingertips, calloused and rough from sword practice, lay just over the swollen nub of my pearl. Only his words, and his threat, held me back from surging forward into the waiting promise of his touch. One moment, two. Then he rewarded me for my restraint by pulling a tiny increment out of me and pushing back in. The slow push and slide of him like that pushed me forward with his downstroke, so that his fingertips grazed my swollen nub, spilling a hot wash of sensation in me in both front and back.

  "Oh!" I moaned, cried, with that slight movement. But I held still.

  "Yes," he crooned and licked my neck, a hot slide of tongue that was both soothing and arousing. "Yes. " And did it again. Pulled out, an increment more. Pushed back in. And though he still crammed me, stretched me, it was not unbearably so anymore. The sharpness of pain faded beneath his careful rocking in and out, and more pleasure spilled out, zinging through me with each lengthening stroke. Each firmer, harder thrust back into me, pushing my pulsing, swollen clitoris more firmly against the rough-gentle play of his fingertips. It was exquisitely pleasurable torture, even more so because I had to hold still, had to endure it. I whimpered with my pleasure and with my restraint. He nipped me, grazing my neck again with his teeth. r />
  "Ah, love," he murmured, groaning, burying his head in the fall of my hair. "You feel so good. Remember. . . hold still," he warned, and I braced myself for more wonderful, terrible things to come.

  Like a pulse from deep within him, I felt his energy ease, loosen, rise. Grow sharper, more electric. Until my very skin tingled from head to toe where he covered me with his greater length. He touched me nowhere in front except for the tantalizing play of fingertips upon that most sensitive, swollen nexus of nerves within me, a touch that came and went as he did within my body. And because he touched me nowhere else in front but there, perhaps that was why I felt it most excruciatingly. Tingling, electrifying, shocking jolts that were both blissful and torturous. Both heaven and hell.

  My need grew, swelled even stronger, as his thrusts grew harder, more wilder. Until that fine line of pleasure and pain became blurred and then became one, and it took me and threw me up into the heavens. Ripped me apart with agonizing pleasure while I floated there in the air. Convulsing me. But even in my explosive release, a part of me was still hungry, thirsty for something more. And that more was what surged within me like a wild tide battering against the shore. He pulled from me and then stretched me back anew, cramming himself into me with poling, thrusting force, with sharp gasping breath, with soft desperate cries. But still careful of me, not completely letting go. And therefore, still reaching for, still striving for his peak.

  His balls, heavy, large, and tight, smacked into me, bounced against my bottom as he seated himself deep. I reached back and grabbed them carefully, and he stilled with his length and thickness buried deep within me as he felt my hold upon him. We both held our breaths as I squeezed his tight sac, his twin balls. Pulled lightly.

  Like a rocket suddenly launched, he toppled free. And as he spurted within me, hot pulsing jets, I felt his energy - that electric, buzzing energy - explode out from him in a showering sparkle. His life-force. And that part of me that had been waiting, hungering for this moment, this release, opened up wide and sucked it - him - that part of him in. Swallowed it down as surely as demons swallowed down blood.